Gloria Steinem, the statue’s most vocal critics, told the New York Times that the design was “not enough,” and that the proposal made it look like Anthony and Stanton “are standing on the names of these other women.”

Christopher CoxOctober 29, 2019

Monumental Women Statue Fund successfully put forth a design for a statue of American suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But not everyone was pleased with the result.

The statue drew criticism from those who felt it suggested that the architects of the suffrage movement were solely white, when in fact African American women such as Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, and Mary Church-Terrell also fought for women’s right to vote.

Now the group announced that it had amended the design to include Sojourner Truth standing alongside Stanton and Anthony. The original design proposal also included text listing the names of 22 women who participated in the movement, including seven African Americans, but when the Public Design Committee voted to exclude that element, “we knew we needed to go back to the drawing board to create a new design,” said the Monumental Women Statue Fund’s president, Pam Elam, in a statement. “Our goal has always been to honor the diverse women in history who fought for equality and justice,” she said, adding that “it is fitting that Anthony, Stanton, and Truth stand together in this statue as they often did in life.”

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